I would recommend that people read the regulations before jumping to conclusions. After reading the comments, it was obvious that people assumed NOAA was claiming rights to pictures of Earth. I posted these comments there, figured I would share here:

This regulation is not intended to limit innovation but to limit international "issues". It is written with the expectation that the US private industries have innovative capabilities.

Imagine if I were to send up a satellite that randomly scanned the Earth with seriously high res imagery; one of two things could happen: 1) I could potentially expose a [US] national security or 2) I could create an incident where an enemy country publicly claims that I'm really a covert [US] military spy satellite and cause an international fear monger reaction.

The license more or less states that if you take images of a country, then you are bound legally to provide un-enhanced raw data of your images to the US Government as well as the head of governments that you took pictures of to prevent any incident caused by speculation.

With modern technology and space based spy systems, it's not hard to invade someone's privacy and/or sovereignty. Although, such invasion may be in of itself innocent the ramifications could be much bigger.

The best thing to do, is apply for the license and be open with any pictures you take and quit being a fear monger. [The US] was/is based on innovation and freedom; but freedom and innovation comes with a level of responsibility.

Gary, I think you have hit the nail on the head there! "freedom and innovation comes with a level of responsibility"

These are issues that appear all over the media worldwide. However, i wonder about these rules when looking at general photography. What the rules are for photographing anything with a camera on earth.

IF someone photographs something and it appears in a newspaper and IF it is a threat to national security somehow, do the same laws come into play? Id be interested to hear from someone in the media, and how they deal with photographing things that could potentially cause some sort of security issue.